Abstract: The Zung self-depression scale and Beck Anxiety Inventory were used both to study the depression and anxiety levels of Armenian Crohn’s disease patients, and to reveal the relation between emotional status and placebo effect of these patients. On the other hand, the blood cell analyses and gut bacteria investigations were used to assess the placebo effect on ESR, and haemoglobin-s and leukocyte-s levels as well as gut commensal E. coli quantities of these patients. Despite of registered high levels of depression and anxiety, the high placebo effect on psychoemotional status for investigated patients during the investigations was described. On the other hand, no positive effect of placebo on measurements of ESP and hemoglobin-s levels of Crohn’s disease patients was revealed. The importance of use of psychotherapies for optimal outcomes during treatments of Crohn’s disease is discussed.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with raw or heat-treated sunflower oil seed with two levels of 7.5% or 15% on unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat and performances of high-yielding lactating cows. Twenty early lactating Holstein cows were used in a complete randomized design. Treatments included: 1) CON, control (without sunflower oil seed). 2) LS-UT, 7.5% raw sunflower oil seed. 3) LS-HT, 7.5% heat-treated sunflower oil seed. 4) HS-UT, 15% raw sunflower oil seed. 5) HS-HT, 15% heat-treated sunflower oil seed. Experimental period lasted for 4 wk, with first 2 wk used for adaptation to the diets. Supplementation with 7.5% raw sunflower seed (LS-UT) tended to decrease milk yield, with 28.37 kg/d compared with the control (34.75 kg/d). Milk fat percentage was increased with the HS-UT treatment that obtained 3.71% compared with CON that was 3.39% and without significant different. Milk protein percent was decreased high level sunflower oil seed treatments (15%) with 3.18% whereas CON treatment is caused 3.40% protein. The cows fed added low sunflower heat-treated (LS-HT) produced milk with the highest content of total unsaturated fatty acid with 32.59 g/100g of milk fat compared with the HS-UT with 23.59 g/100g of milk fat. Content of C18 unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat increased from 21.68 g/100g of fat in the HS-UT to 22.50, 23.98, 27.39 and 30.30 g/100g of fat from the cow fed HS-HT, CON, LS-UT and LS-HT treatments, respectively. C18:2 isomers of fatty acid in milk were greater by LSHT supplementation with significant effect (P < 0.05). Total of C18 unsaturated fatty acids content was significantly higher in milk of animal fed added low heat-treated sunflower (7.5%) than those fed with high sunflower. In all, results of this study showed that diet cow's supplementation with sunflower oil seed tended to reduce milk production of lactating cows but can improve C18 UFA (Unsaturated Fatty Acid) content in milk fat. 7.5% level of sunflower oil seed that heated seemed to be the optimal source to increase UFA production.
Abstract: Intelligent Transportation System integrates various modern advanced technologies into the ground transportation system, and it will be the goal of urban transport system in the future because of its comprehensive effects. However, it also brings some problems, such as project performance assessment, fairness of benefiting groups, fund management, which are directly related to its operation and implementation. Wuhan has difficulties in organizing transportation because of its nature feature (river and lake), therefore, calling Service of Taxi plays an important role in transportation. This paper researches on calling Service of Taxi in Wuhan, based on quantitative and qualitative analysis. It analyzes its operations management systematically, including business model, finance, usage analysis and users evaluation. As for business model, it is that the government leads the operation at the initial stage, and the third part dominates the operation at the mature stage, which not only eases the pressure of the third part and benefits the spread of the calling service at the initial stage, but also alleviates financial pressure of government and improve the efficiency of the operation at the mature stage. As for finance, it draws that this service will bring heavy financial burden of equipments, but it will be alleviated in the future because of its spread. As for usage analysis, through data comparison, this service can bring some benefits for taxi drivers, and time and spatial distribution of usage have certain features. As for user evaluation, it analyzes using group and the reason why choosing it. At last, according to the analysis above, the paper puts forward the potentials, limitations, and future development strategies for it.
Abstract: This work presents the first results from the long-term laboratory experiment dealing with impact of drought on soil properties. Three groups of the treatment (A, B and C) with different regime of irrigation were prepared. The soil water content was maintained at 70 % of soil water holding capacity in group A, at 40 % in group B. In group C, soil water regime was maintained in the range of wilting point. Each group of the experiment was divided into three variants (A1 = B1, C1; A2 = B2, C2 etc.) with three repetitions: Variants A1 (B1, C1) were a controls without addition of another fertilizer. Variants A2 (B2, C2) were fertilized with mineral nitrogen fertilizer DAM 390 (0.140 Mg of N per ha) and variants A3 (B3, C3) contained 45 g of Cp per a pot.
The significant differences (ANOVA, P
Abstract: The need for Information Security in organizations, regardless of their type and size, is being addressed by emerging standards and recommended best practices. The various standards and practices which evolved in recent years and are still being developed and constantly revised, address the issue of Information Security from different angles. This paper attempts to provide an overview of Information Security Standards and Practices by briefly discussing some of the most popular ones. Through a comparative study of their similarities and differences, some insight can be obtained on how their combination may lead to an increased level of Information Security.
Abstract: With the long-term objective of Critical Heat Flux (CHF) prediction, a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) framework for simulation of subcooled and saturated nucleate pool boiling is developed. One case of saturated, and three cases of subcooled boiling at different subcooling levels are simulated. Grid refinement study is also reported. Both boiling and condensation phenomena can be computed simultaneously in the proposed numerical framework. Computed bubble detachment diameters of the saturated nucleate pool boiling cases agree well with the experiment. The flow structures around the growing bubble are presented and the accompanying physics is described. The relation between heat flux evolution from the heated wall and the bubble growth is studied, along with investigations of temperature distribution and flow field evolutions.
Abstract: During the past several years, face recognition in video
has received significant attention. Not only the wide range of
commercial and law enforcement applications, but also the availability
of feasible technologies after several decades of research contributes
to the trend. Although current face recognition systems have reached a
certain level of maturity, their development is still limited by the
conditions brought about by many real applications. For example,
recognition images of video sequence acquired in an open
environment with changes in illumination and/or pose and/or facial
occlusion and/or low resolution of acquired image remains a largely
unsolved problem. In other words, current algorithms are yet to be
developed. This paper provides an up-to-date survey of video-based
face recognition research. To present a comprehensive survey, we
categorize existing video based recognition approaches and present
detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category.
In addition, relevant topics such as real time detection, real time
tracking for video, issues such as illumination, pose, 3D and low
resolution are covered.
Abstract: Students with high level skills are in demand, especially in scare skill environments. If universities wish to be successful and competitive, its students need to be adequately equipped with the necessary tools. Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is an essential component of the education of a student. The relevance of higher education should be assessed in terms of how it meets the needs of society and the world of work in a global economy. This paper demonstrates how to use Habermas's theory of communicative action to reflect on students- perceptions on their integration in the work environment to achieve social integration and financial justification. Interpretive questionnaires are used to determine the students- view of how they are integrated into society, and contributing to the economy. This paper explores the use of Habermas-s theory of communicative action to give theoretical and methodological guidance for the practice of social findings obtained in this inquiry.
Abstract: To respond to the Kyoto Protocol, the policy of Payment for Environmental Service (PES), which was entitled “Plain Landscape Afforestation Program (PLAP)", was certified by Executive Yuan in Taiwan on 31 August 2001 and has been implementing for six years since 1 January 2002. Although the PLAP has received a lot of positive comments, there are still many difficulties during the process of implementation, such as insufficient technology for afforestation, private landowners- low interests in participating in PLAP, insufficient subsidies, and so on, which are potential threats that hinder the PLAP from moving forward in future. In this paper, selecting Ping-Tung County in Taiwan as a sample region and targeting those private landowners with and without intention to participate in the PLAP, respectively, we conduct an empirical analysis based on the Logit model to investigate the factors that determine whether those private landowners join the PLAP, so as to realize the incentive effects of the PLAP upon the personal decision on afforestation. The possible factors that might determine private landowner-s participation in the PLAP include landowner-s characteristics, cropland characteristics, as well as policy factors. Among them, the policy factors include afforestation subsidy amount (+), duration of afforestation subsidy (+), the rules on adjoining and adjacent areas (+), and so on, which do not reach the remarkable level in statistics though, but the directions of variable signs are consistent with the intuition behind the policy. As for the landowners- characteristics, each of age (+), education level (–), and annual household income (+) variables reaches 10% of the remarkable level in statistics; as for the cropland characteristics, each of cropland area (+), cropland price (–), and the number of cropland parcels (–) reaches 1% of the remarkable level in statistics. In light of the above, the cropland characteristics are the dominate factor that determines the probability of landowner-s participation in the PLAP. In the Logit model established by this paper, the probability of correctly estimating nonparticipants is 98%, the probability of correctly estimating the participants is 71.8%, and the probability for the overall estimation is 95%. In addition, Hosmer-Lemeshow test and omnibus test also revealed that the Logit model in this paper may provide fine goodness of fit and good predictive power in forecasting private landowners- participation in this program. The empirical result of this paper expects to help the implementation of the afforestation programs in Taiwan.
Abstract: In order to enhance the contrast in the regions where the pixels have similar intensities, this paper presents a new histogram equalization scheme. Conventional global equalization schemes over-equalizes these regions so that too bright or dark pixels are resulted and local equalization schemes produce unexpected discontinuities at the boundaries of the blocks. The proposed algorithm segments the original histogram into sub-histograms with reference to brightness level and equalizes each sub-histogram with the limited extents of equalization considering its mean and variance. The final image is determined as the weighted sum of the equalized images obtained by using the sub-histogram equalizations. By limiting the maximum and minimum ranges of equalization operations on individual sub-histograms, the over-equalization effect is eliminated. Also the result image does not miss feature information in low density histogram region since the remaining these area is applied separating equalization. This paper includes how to determine the segmentation points in the histogram. The proposed algorithm has been tested with more than 100 images having various contrasts in the images and the results are compared to the conventional approaches to show its superiority.
Abstract: In this note first we define the notions of intuitionistic
fuzzy dual positive implicative hyper K-ideals of types
1,2,3,4 and intuitionistic fuzzy dual hyper K-ideals. Then we
give some classifications about these notions according to the
level subsets. Also by given some examples we show that these
notions are not equivalent, however we prove some theorems
which show that there are some relationships between these
notions. Finally we define the notions of product and antiproduct
of two fuzzy subsets and then give some theorems
about the relationships between the intuitionistic fuzzy dual
positive implicative hyper K-ideal of types 1,2,3,4 and their
(anti-)products, in particular we give a main decomposition
theorem.
Abstract: This paper presents an analysis result of relationship
between business and information technology (IT) in business process
reengineering (BPR). 258 Japanese firm-level data collected have been
analyzed using structural equation modeling. This analysis was aimed
to illuminating success factors of achieve effective BPR. Analysis was
focused on management factors (including organizational factors) and
implementing management method (e.g. balanced score card, internal
control, etc.).These results would contribute for achieving effective
BPR by showing effective tasks and environment to be focused.
Abstract: With the exponential rise in the number of multimedia
applications available, the best-effort service provided by the Internet
today is insufficient. Researchers have been working on new
architectures like the Next Generation Network (NGN) which, by
definition, will ensure Quality of Service (QoS) in an all-IP based
network [1]. For this approach to become a reality, reservation of
bandwidth is required per application per user. WiMAX (Worldwide
Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a wireless communication
technology which has predefined levels of QoS which can be
provided to the user [4]. IPv6 has been created as the successor for
IPv4 and resolves issues like the availability of IP addresses and
QoS. This paper provides a design to use the power of WiMAX as an
NSP (Network Service Provider) for NGN using IPv6. The use of the
Traffic Class (TC) field and the Flow Label (FL) field of IPv6 has
been explained for making QoS requests and grants [6], [7]. Using
these fields, the processing time is reduced and routing is simplified.
Also, we define the functioning of the ASN gateway and the NGN
gateway (NGNG) which are edge node interfaces in the NGNWiMAX
design. These gateways ensure QoS management through
built in functions and by certain physical resources and networking
capabilities.
Abstract: Iron in groundwater is one of the problems that render the water unsuitable for drinking. The concentration above 0.3 mg/L is common in groundwater. The conventional method of removal is by precipitation under oxic condition. In this study, iron removal under anaerobic conditions was examined by batch experiment as a main purpose. The process involved by purging of groundwater samples with H2S to form iron sulfide. Removal up to 83% for 1 mg/L iron solution was achieved. The removal efficiency dropped to 82% and 75% for the higher initial iron concentrations 3.55 and 5.01 mg/L, respectively. The average residual sulfide concentration in water after the process was 25*g/L. The Eh level during the process was -272 mV. The removal process was found to follow the first order reaction with average rate constant of 4.52 x 10-3. The half-life for the concentrations to reduce from initial values was 157 minutes.
Abstract: This paper features the modeling and design of a
Robust Decentralized Fast Output Sampling (RDFOS) Feedback
control technique for the active vibration control of a smart flexible
multimodel Euler-Bernoulli cantilever beams for a multivariable
(MIMO) case by retaining the first 6 vibratory modes. The beam
structure is modeled in state space form using the concept of
piezoelectric theory, the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and the Finite
Element Method (FEM) technique by dividing the beam into 4 finite
elements and placing the piezoelectric sensor / actuator at two finite
element locations (positions 2 and 4) as collocated pairs, i.e., as
surface mounted sensor / actuator, thus giving rise to a multivariable
model of the smart structure plant with two inputs and two outputs.
Five such multivariable models are obtained by varying the
dimensions (aspect ratios) of the aluminium beam. Using model
order reduction technique, the reduced order model of the higher
order system is obtained based on dominant Eigen value retention
and the Davison technique. RDFOS feedback controllers are
designed for the above 5 multivariable-multimodel plant. The closed
loop responses with the RDFOS feedback gain and the magnitudes of
the control input are obtained and the performance of the proposed
multimodel smart structure system is evaluated for vibration control.
Abstract: The Taiwan government has started to promote the “Plain Landscape Afforestation and Greening Program" since 2002. A key task of the program was the payment for environmental services (PES), entitled the “Plain Landscape Afforestation Policy" (PLAP), which was certificated by the Executive Yuan on August 31, 2001 and enacted on January 1, 2002. According to the policy, it is estimated that the total area of afforestation will be 25,100 hectares by December 31, 2007. Until the end of 2007, the policy had been enacted for six years in total and the actual area of afforestation was 8,919.18 hectares. Among them, Taiwan Sugar Corporation (TSC) was accounted for 7,960 hectares (with 2,450.83 hectares as public service area) which occupied 86.22% of the total afforestation area; the private farmland promoted by local governments was accounted for 869.18 hectares which occupied 9.75% of the total afforestation area. Based on the above, we observe that most of the afforestation area in this policy is executed by TSC, and the achievement ratio by TSC is better than by others. It implies that the success of the PLAP is seriously related to the execution of TSC. The objective of this study is to analyze the relevant policy planning of TSC's participation in the PLAP, suggest complementary measures, and draw up effective adjustment mechanisms, so as to improve the effectiveness of executing the policy. Our main conclusions and suggestions are summarized as follows: 1. The main reason for TSC’s participation in the PLAP is based on their passive cooperation with the central government or company policy. Prior to TSC’s participation in the PLAP, their lands were mainly used for growing sugarcane. 2. The main factors of TSC's consideration on the selection of tree species are based on the suitability of land and species. The largest proportion of tree species is allocated to economic forests, and the lack of technical instruction was the main problem during afforestation. Moreover, the method of improving TSC’s future development in leisure agriculture and landscape business becomes a key topic. 3. TSC has developed short and long-term plans on participating in the PLAP for the future. However, there is no great willingness or incentive on budgeting for such detailed planning. 4. Most people from TSC interviewed consider the requirements on PLAP unreasonable. Among them, an unreasonable requirement on the number of trees accounted for the greatest proportion; furthermore, most interviewees suggested that the government should continue to provide incentives even after 20 years. 5. Since the government shares the same goals as TSC, there should be sufficient cooperation and communication that support the technical instruction and reduction of afforestation cost, which will also help to improve effectiveness of the policy.
Abstract: A procedure commonly used in Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) to evaluate the neighborhoods functions that use the non-deterministic algorithms is the calculation of the critical path in a digraph. This paper presents an experimental study of the cost of computation that exists when the calculation of the critical path in the solution for instances in which a JSSP of large size is involved. The results indicate that if the critical path is use in order to generate neighborhoods in the meta-heuristics that are used in JSSP, an elevated cost of computation exists in spite of the fact that the calculation of the critical path in any digraph is of polynomial complexity.
Abstract: Business process automation is an important task in an
enterprise business environment software development. The
requirements of processing acceleration and automation level of
enterprises are inherently different from one organization to another.
We present a methodology and system for automation of business
process management system architecture by multi-agent collaboration
based on SOA. Design layer processes are modeled in semantic
markup language for web services application. At the core of our
system is considering certain types of human tasks to their further
automation across over multiple platform environments. An
improved abnormality processing with model for automation of
BPMS architecture by multi-agent collaboration based on SOA is
introduced. Validating system for efficiency of process automation,
an application for educational knowledge base instance would also be
described.
Abstract: This essay presents applicative methods to reduce human exposure levels in the area around base transceiver stations in a environment with multiple sources based on ITU-T recommendation K.70. An example is presented to understand the mitigation techniques and their results and also to learn how they can be applied, especially in developing countries where there is not much research on non-ionizing radiations.
Abstract: Recently, lots of researchers are attracted to retrieving
multimedia database by using some impression words and their values.
Ikezoe-s research is one of the representatives and uses eight pairs of
opposite impression words. We had modified its retrieval interface and
proposed '2D-RIB' in the previous work. The aim of the present paper
is to improve his/her satisfaction level to the retrieval result in the
2D-RIB. Our method is to extend the 2D-RIB. One of our extensions is
to define and introduce the following two measures: 'melody
goodness' and 'general acceptance'. Another extension is three types
of customization menus. The result of evaluation using a pilot system
is as follows. Both of these two measures 'melody goodness'
and -general acceptance- can contribute to the improvement.
Moreover, it is effective if we introduce the customization menu
which enables a retrieval person to reduce the strictness level of
retrieval condition in an impression pair based on his/her need.